Springtime for Bamboozlement

Robocall campaigns don’t place a high premium on truth. But Bill Kristol and his “Emergency Committee for Israel” seem to have taken the tradition right past 11.Ron Kampeas of the JTA reports that Kristol has put out a spliced together series of context-free quotes to create a fictitious “debate” between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The caller ID on the calls actually actually “William Kristol” for reasons I’m not actually sure. Maybe he’s just doing them from home?

Kampeas has some key points.

There has never been any such debate, of course, and it’s immediately clear to me that it’s a mock-up, with “answers” spliced in from different appearances. But I’m steeped in this. I don’t know how clear it would be though to someone who doesn’t follow this day to day.

More substantively, the quote grabs have almost nothing to do with one another, although this is not evident in the calls. A more accurate presentation of the Netanyahu’s quote that is used would suggest that the two leaders are actually more in agreenment on nuclear Iran — the issue of the “debate” — than not.

Obama’s “opening remark”, in which he “respects” Iran’s sovereignty, is from a press conference in 2009, in which he rejected Iranian claims of U.S. involvement in post-election protests — and also decried Iranian repression of the protesters. It had nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear capability.

Netanyahu’s “response” is from his speech to AIPAC this year (three years later!).

I won’t feign surprise. But good arguments generally don’t require lying so much, do they?

If anyone has the audio of this thing, I beg of you, please contact us.